Tuesday 6 November 2007 18.54 EST
First published on Tuesday 6 November 2007 18.54 EST

Clegg, Foggy and Compo ponder their next harebrained scheme

Here's a thing I only recently discovered - a thing I had never even contemplated before, never even considered as the remotest of possibilities, but which nevertheless is as true as I am sitting here with a look of incredulity, wonder and perhaps just a smidgen of unaccustomed national pride upon my face - Last of the Summer Wine is the world's longest-running comedy series. It began in 1973 and is currently filming its 29th series, all of which have been written by the same man, Roy Clarke.

There is something deeply stirring about a sitcom based around a sexa-septua-and-occasionally-even-octogenarian trio proving itself so resistant to mortality. At the moment, UKTV Drama is halfway through the second series, from 1975, which has the original trio - Cyril Blamire, with his pretensions to grandeur recurrently punctured by the walking silo that is Compo Simmonite, the two of them overseen by the mildly bemused observer of human nature, Norman Clegg, played by Peter Sallis - whose components have, of necessity, been replaced over the years. Old sitcoms never die, but actors, alas, do - or else they get lured away by Nick Parks to become the voice of plasticine men that take Hollywood by storm.

Not that it matters. At least until the death of Bill Owen, who played Compo, Last of the Summer Wine retained its essence. A streak of sadness persists beneath the comedy, as three elderly unmarried men continue to enjoy and endure each others' company and occasionally skid down a hill in a tin bath to alleviate the bleak essential loneliness of their lives. Nora Batty and the wrinkled stockings so beloved of the priapic Compo ("I'm going to wear her down with the power of my passion. I can't help it if I hear music whenever she goes by!") linger in the popular imagination as proof that love is ageless and eternal. And Ivy's summoning bellow to Sid - "Get 'ere, you great shiftless buttock!" - will ring down the ages forever. It is comedia melancholia at its finest. Long live the Holmfirth boys.